The Face of Time - POV - Aarhus Universitet

A Danish Journal of Film Studies 19
times with a video camera and with a girl who functioned as a
model, so I could see what was possible to do technically, and how
many people could be in one scene or another. The cinematographer
and I had to do a lot of planning. Since there is almost no natural
light, all of the scenes had to be lit.
The film could run no more than eight or maximum nine minutes
with credits, because Swedish Television was a co-producer and the
film had to fit into a ten-minute slot. That meant I also had to decide
ahead of time approximately how long each image would last and
how many shots there would be. There are a lot of people moving in
and out all the time, and to be able to cut in a way that looked right
and with transitions that would work was an interesting challenge.
And of course you come up with better solutions during the
shooting, but I tried to be well prepared because there were so many
people involved. And some people had to wait around a whole day
just to be in the background of a shot for a few seconds.
I assume that the people in your film aren’t actors. And you told each of
them what to do. Maybe we could take one or two examples. There’s a very
striking shot with two young girls facing each other and speaking some
Slavic language.
Polish.
Do you remember what kind of instructions you gave them?
I told them to speak about anything other than the shooting or what
we were doing on the location. That was the only thing they were
not supposed to do, because if somebody who understands Polish
heard them talk about the filming, that wouldn’t be good. I just
asked them to talk about something they do in school. Nothing
more specific than that. The main thing I wanted there was the